Anyone got Mini Cooper s experience?

Evening all,

The wife’s golf is having its egr valve replaced so she’s been using the Mini Cooper S R53 (supercharged) for the last couple of days.  Gets a phone call this morning saying it won’t start, so I nipped home from work tried to start it and it just cranks no attempt to start.

I pulled a HT lead to find it covered in oil, all 4 the same.  Assumed the rocker cover seals had failed allowing oil into the spark plug wells knackering the plugs hence no spark no start.

Tonight I get home, mate called round with a new rocker gasket. Got chatting and I pulled the dipstick to find no oil what so ever on it  err.... proceeded to remove a plug and it is covered in oil, looking down spark plug tube, seems to be a lot of oil on the piston.  I can only imagine all 4 are the same!

I’m thinking it’s fairly terminal, either rings or melted pistons or spun a shell?

It’s not a modded car in anyway, other than replacing the rear crank seal last year due to oil leak, it’s not been a bad car.

Gaz

Sure it's not dropped down when removing the plug .... it is a common fault for the seals to go on the rocker cover spark plugs

It may be that and I’m hoping it is, when I get home tomorrow going to put a spray bottle nozzle and tube down the others to extract excess oil before removing plug. Just seen a vid on YouTube of some guy doing that.

https://youtu.be/7XhkgYScs9I

Just seems mad that there’s no oil on the dip stick, no leaking can be seen on the outside of engine. Fuel consumption has been higher lately though, wether poor spark may have contributed to that?

I would go with nomads line of thought .

I would also use a incandescent test light to check for spark potential from the coil pack with lead pulled and tip of test light held close to coil terminal .

compression test would be useful to once all plugs out

does oil light go out on long starter cranking ? is possible just leaking lot of oil and been over looked, hope caught it in time and easy resolved !

Yeah oil light goes out..... when you turn the ignition off

Yeah it goes off when cranking. Will drain sump later on and see how much is actually in it. It’s suffered from oil leaks since I’ve had it, but thought I’d cured them all.. looking under the car it’s bone dry, no trace of a leak, not noticed any smoke out the exhaust. I’ll do a comp test over weekend.

Cheers chaps

Might be an idea to check out the engine breathers while you're in there. If its suffered from leaks for a while it could point to that being blocked!

Thankfully it was just the spark plug tube seals, totally knackered. Sucked all the oil I could out around the spark plugs, removed plugs to find them drive, phew! It had lost about 1.5L of oil.

Got it back together and started first time, finally got two cars working again

Checked engine breathers and all clear

Quick vid of the seals:

https://youtu.be/PbdF8vsH00o <—- not HD

Hate to say I told you so